The Lure

by Bill Napier

  Fresh bread, milk, vegetables and assorted groceries were piled up on the kitchen table. He filled a kettle and put a couple of slices of bread into an electric toaster.

  Fed and watered, and faintly resentful of the time it had taken up, he walked along the empty corridor towards the theological library, anxious to coax back the conjecture which had come and gone in his angel dream. He was surprised to see the door to the computer room slightly ajar.

  And even more surprised to see a stranger, his back to the door, tapping at Svetlana’s computer. Her notes were on the desk; the man had clearly been going through them.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  The man turned. He was in his thirties, with brown hair greying at the edges, and a tanned skin which told of years spent someplace hot. Brown, slightly watery eyes assessed Petrie through wire-framed spectacles. When he stood up Petrie saw that the man was lean and muscular, the sort who ran four miles before breakfast. His voice was English public school and surprisingly deep: ‘Going through the signal. Mind-blowing, isn’t it? But it can’t be for real.’

  Petrie, taken aback, asked lamely, ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Hanning, Jeremy Hanning. And you must be Dr Petrie.’ The man gave a carefully judged smile. ‘I’m an observer for the Cabinet Office. I have to see what you’re all up to and report to Lord Sangster by tomorrow evening. It’s that simple.’

  Warily, Petrie asked, ‘How much of a briefing have you had?’

  ‘The story is that you’ve been contacted by little green men.’ He nodded towards the terminal and gave an isn’t-it-silly smile.

  ‘And you don’t believe it. Does Lord Sangster?’

  Hanning ignored the question. ‘There are five of you here, am I right? Two British, two Russians and a Norwegian.’

  ‘Yes. The original team was one Brit and two Russians. Freya Størmer and I were co-opted.’

  ‘How do you get on with the Russians?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘No, ah … differences?’ The man was studying Petrie closely. One eye, Petrie noticed, seemed slightly larger than the other, but he thought that might be due to a cold.

  ‘None – why should there be? Look, how do I know you’re not a journalist or something?’

  More laughter, a touch too brittle. ‘We’ll phone Lord Sangster up, shall we? Let’s use the video circuit.’

  ‘First let’s get the team awake. Forgive me, but I think we have to make a communal judgement about you.’

  * * *

  There was a long teak desk at the centre of the administrator’s office. A black computer sat at the head of this desk, and a large video monitor sat atop the computer, and a wide-angle camera sat atop the monitor. Sangster’s face appeared on the screen, nearly filling it, against a background of books.

  ‘Simon Sangster here.’

  Gibson sat at the opposite end of the table, facing the screen directly. ‘Lord Sangster, this is Charles Gibson, principal investigator on the Dark Matter Project. Good morning, sir.’

  Sangster returned the greeting with a nod.

  ‘I have a Jeremy Hanning here. He tells me that you’ve sent him out to oversee the proceedings.’

  ‘Oversee is too strong a word, Dr Gibson.’ Sangster’s face was expressionless; he was making no attempt to be friendly or encouraging.

  ‘First, would you confirm that this is in fact Jeremy Hanning.’ Gibson played with controls on a keyboard and the camera swivelled round to Hanning.

  ‘Well, of course it’s Jeremy. Who else would it be?’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ Back to Gibson.

  ‘Jeremy will assess the situation and report to me at nine o’clock tomorrow evening by the British clock. The main thing is to confirm that this is not some dreadful error and that you really have received an extraterrestrial signal. Have you identified the source?’

  ‘We’ll be working on that today.’

  ‘And I understand you say the message contains information of a biological nature.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Petrie had a momentary, startling vision of Sangster as a calculating lizard. He put it down to a slight exophthalmic goitre coupled with deep eyelids. His lordship was saying, ‘What sort of information?’

  Gibson hesitated. ‘We’ll be working on that too.’

  ‘I look forward to hearing from you tomorrow evening. Meantime, of course, security is everything.’

  ‘Agreed.’ Gibson hesitated again, licked his lips. Then: ‘But I intend to make a public announcement on Monday, whatever stage we’ve reached in our investigation.’

  Later, and many times over, Gibson was to wonder why he had said that. Perhaps, he would wonder, he was unconsciously striking a blow in an ancient battle, defending a culture of openness against one of secrecy. Even as he spoke he sensed that something was wrong. Hanning cleared his throat. Shtyrkov, across the desk from Gibson, put his head in his hands.

  Sangster was silent for a moment. His tone was icy. ‘That’s not your decision, Dr Gibson.’

  Gibson swallowed. ‘Actually, it is. I’m the PI here.’

  ‘The facility is, however, financed by Her Majesty through PPARC, which falls within my department.’

  ‘You may finance it, Lord Sangster, but I run it.’

  Damn it, Charlie, shut up. This is a disaster.

  ‘You may think so, but the fact that I finance it means that I also run it. HMG has ultimate responsibility for work carried out on its behalf. And there are assuredly dimensions to this discovery going beyond mere scientific interest.’

  Gibson said nothing, but his face was showing open hostility.

  ‘Let’s not dig ourselves into trenches, Dr Gibson. We must talk through the implications of this discovery before we make it public. It’s in everyone’s interests to get this right. Jeremy, nine o’clock tomorrow.’

  * * *

  ‘I won’t be done out of this.’ Gibson’s face was black with anger. ‘I’m not having this discovery announced by some bloody government minister.’

  Svetlana, next to him, touched his shoulder in a gesture of sympathy.

  ‘That’s what’s behind this,’ Gibson continued angrily. ‘Sangster wants to pre-empt the announcement.’

  ‘For once I agree with you,’ Shtyrkov said.

  Svetlana said, ‘So do I, Charlie. The announcement has to be made by the discoverer.’

  ‘Which is me. PI’s privilege.’

  ‘But I put twelve years into this machine,’ Svetlana said. ‘I get a slice of the cake.’

  ‘You do, Svetlana, of course you do.’ Charlie looked across at Shtyrkov. ‘We all do.’

  Nobody mentioned that Hanning was excluded from the ‘we’; it was too obvious to need mentioning.

  Petrie said, ‘You guys have been on this for years; I turned up two days ago. I don’t deserve an equal share.’

  ‘Tom, that’s not right,’ Shtyrkov said. ‘Your contribution deserves full recognition. Without it, where would we be? Your name goes on as part of the team. So does Freya’s.’

  ‘I’ve contributed nothing yet,’ said Freya.

  ‘But you will.’

  ‘I agree with Vashislav,’ said Svetlana. ‘We’re in this together.’

  ‘I feel a bit of a lemon here,’ Hanning said.

  ‘Nobody asked your opinion,’ Gibson said in a sudden outburst of fury.

  ‘Charlie,’ Svetlana chided him gently.

  ‘Mr Hanning, I’m sorry about this…’

  ‘Jeremy, please.’

  ‘Jeremy,’ Petrie continued. ‘But I wonder if you would leave us for a few minutes?’

  ‘I’m here as an observer on the authority of the Cabinet Office.’

  Petrie waited.

  ‘But I suppose in the circumstances…’

  The moment Hanning left, closing the conference door behind him with a click, Gibson spoke quietly and rapidly. ‘Monday morning we announce this jointly. We follow the IAA protocols. I send e-mails to the Secretary
General of the United Nations, IAU Commission 51, et cetera.’

  Shtyrkov said, ‘We should put it out on the internet. It will be round the globe in minutes. Whatever your position, Charlee, the British government cannot claim jurisdiction over me. I am a Russian. But not Monday,’ he cautioned. ‘They’ll be expecting that. Maybe pre-emption is their game. Spring a surprise. Do it sooner.’

  ‘Maybe their game is suppression,’ Svetlana suggested. ‘Maybe they don’t want this information to get out.’

  The anger in Gibson’s face became tinged with bafflement. ‘Why not? Where’s the sense in that?’

  She raised her hands. ‘Who knows?’

  ‘How could they suppress the secret?’ Petrie asked. ‘We all know about it.’

  There was a sudden, tense silence.

  Petrie said, ‘Let’s not get into fantasy here.’

  … your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.

  A warning, but of what and from whom?

  Shtyrkov tapped the table emphatically. ‘Suppression, pre-emption, whatever. We must beat them to it. Make the announcement sooner, Charlee. Today.’

  Gibson said, ‘When I go public with this I want to say the signal has come from Planet X or Star Y. Freya, how goes the identification?’

  ‘I may or may not have identified the source. It’s weird.’

  ‘How long will it take you to get one hundred per cent certainty?’

  ‘Never. But I’m weeding out the implausibles.’

  ‘With or without identification, this goes into the public domain on Monday.’

  ‘Today, Charlee. Don’t give them time for mischief.’

  ‘It’s a balance, Vash. Give Freya a chance to come up with something.’

  ‘I might – just – be able to decrypt more of the message,’ Petrie said. ‘I’ll work on it today.’

  Shtyrkov said, ‘Svetlana, your job is distraction. Spend the day briefing this man from Her Majesty’s Government. Tell him everything. Tell him anything. But keep him out of our hair.’

  Svetlana said, ‘Shall I wear fishnet tights?’

  16

  The Whirlpool Galaxy

  ‘Tom! Tom! It’s Vashislav.’

  The bedside lamp was shining in Petrie’s face. He waved Freya ahead and pulled on clothes, slipping his feet into shoes without tying the laces. He wondered if he was destined ever to sleep again, but the urgency in Freya’s voice said there were other priorities.

  Until he saw the Russian, Petrie had always assumed that ‘foaming at the mouth’, as a description of a man gone mad, was populist nonsense. But flecks of white frothy foam were dribbling out of the corners of Shtyrkov’s mouth. He was in the main hall, arms flapping, an idiot grin lighting up his face. He was running from one chandelier to the next, shouting and laughing in Russian, staring up at them in adoration. Svetlana was standing at the foot of the stairs, long yellow nightdress hanging under her red robe and her face screwed up in distress.

  The Russian saw Petrie, pointed to the chandeliers and called up in English, ‘Look at the pretty lights!’ His eyes were starting to roll.

  ‘How long has he been like this?’

  Svetlana said, ‘I don’t know. I heard him singing half an hour ago but didn’t think it was anything at first. I’ve been up for ten minutes. I’ve tried to stop him but he just keeps going.’

  ‘He’ll collapse,’ Freya said. ‘Nobody can keep that up.’

  Tears of happiness were welling from Shtyrkov’s eyes; his voice was enraptured but he was gasping for breath. ‘Aren’t they beautiful, Tom and Freya? Are we not in Paradise?’

  ‘Vash.’ Petrie stepped forward. ‘Come to bed.’ But Shtyrkov giggled and ran off like a naughty child, wheezing and foaming.

  ‘Where are the light switches?’ Petrie called back to Svetlana.

  ‘Round here.’ She switched them off.

  In the sudden pitch black, Shtyrkov’s footsteps halted, as if he too had been switched off. Petrie moved in the direction of the man’s rasping breath, took him by the arm, and led him back towards the stairs. Shtyrkov was trembling, and whimpering quietly.

  * * *

  ‘Temporal lobe damage. It affects perceptions.’

  ‘Are you sure, Freya?’

  ‘Not even fifty per cent sure. All I can say is that it fits the profile I got on the internet.’

  ‘Vashislav ran into the thick of the beam when it was hitting the lake.’

  ‘Is it reversible, progressive or what?’ It was just after noon but Petrie was at breakfast: a biscuit, which he was dipping into his second coffee. He hadn’t bothered to shave.

  ‘I don’t know. Some people say Van Gogh had temporal lobe epilepsy, that it maybe even accounts for the intensity of his paintings. Colours are brighter, everything is seen more vividly. And Vashislav seems to love glittering things.’

  ‘How can a particle beam do that? If it was disrupting cells it would surely have fried his whole brain.’

  Freya said, ‘It usually needs a lesion, but there were thin, concentrated pencil beams in the flow. And maybe it’s more subtle than that. A powerful magnetic field applied to the brain can play tricks.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘You don’t understand, Tom, you’re a creature of mid-latitude. Your body is synchronised with the rhythms of light. But in polar latitudes we’re more sensitive to the effects of strong geomagnetic disturbances. We don’t understand how, but there’s a clear connection between things like Russian mine accidents and strong magnetic disturbances up top. It’s been established by the polar geophysics people at Murmansk. They do upper atmosphere.’

  Petrie said, ‘The particles were surely non-magnetic, otherwise the underwater magnets would have distorted their paths.’

  ‘Unless they carried so much energy that not even forty thousand gauss could divert them,’ Freya suggested.

  ‘That’s surely incredible,’ Petrie said.

  ‘It’s testable, Tom. The ionosphere is charged up. If you fired charged particles through the Earth you’d create a short-circuit between ionosphere and ground. At the very least you’d get disturbances in radio or radar. You might even get weird cloud effects through nucleation around the beam.’

  ‘What about Charlie and Svetlana?’ Petrie wondered.

  ‘They were either on the periphery of the particle flow or they missed it altogether. I haven’t seen anything odd about them yet, Tom, have you?’

  ‘They’re both odd. But what other symptoms might we see? Assuming it’s this temporal lobe thing.’

  ‘All sorts. Anxiety, visceral symptoms, feelings of fear or anger, destructive or aggressive behaviour, out-of-body experiences, you see tunnels, bright lights and so on. Sometimes you get an overwhelming sensation that there’s someone near you. You might even see a face, and extreme character traits appear. Some people get religious hallucinations.’

  ‘At least Vash isn’t claiming to be Jesus or something. Will you tell him what you suspect?’

  Freya said, ‘Not until after the ET announcement. Let’s not spoil his moment of glory.’

  ‘We should keep an eye on the other two.’

  * * *

  Shtyrkov was last to appear, mid-afternoon. He showed no obvious after-effects, and made no mention of the trauma he had been through in the early hours. Petrie wondered if the Russian even remembered it. They settled themselves around a table in a bar next to the common room. Gibson stared greedily at a folder of papers Freya was holding.

  Hanning said, ‘Dr Popov gave me a very thorough briefing. I must say I’m having difficulty taking it in.’

  Gibson ignored him; Freya was the focus of their attention. ‘Friday afternoon, Freya. What have you got for us?’

  ‘I’ve narrowed the source down to two possibles, depending on whether the particles came down through the lake from above, or up from below. Here’s candidate number one.’ She spread a large image on the table.

 
There was an assortment of gasps from everyone. Petrie’s mind began to race. Two blue, feathery arms spiralled out of a reddish-white nucleus. The arms were lined with dark lanes. One of them, with little outcrops striking off, extended as a long bridge to a smaller, outlying galaxy. ‘M51, in Canes Venatici, not too many degrees from the north galactic pole. It’s just below the Plough.’

  ‘M51? The Whirlpool galaxy?’ Gibson’s tone was awed.

  ‘The Whirlpool. A bright open-arm spiral, part of a little group of galaxies. It’s over thirty million light years away. Specifically, the signal came from this region here.’ Freya used a pencil to circle a small area at the edge of the nucleus, where one of the spiral arms was just breaking away. ‘It’s rich in Population II stars, with lots of red and yellow dwarfs about ten billion years old. Twice the age of the Sun.’

  ‘But that’s—’

  ‘If the signal came from here, Charlie, it set out thirty million years ago, long before Homo sapiens existed. Before there were even primates.’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ Gibson said. ‘How could they signal us if we didn’t even exist when they fired off their message? Anyway, no life forms could survive next to the nucleus of a galaxy. What’s your second candidate?’

  Freya spread out a second celestial image. The scientists gazed in bewilderment at a near-blank patch of sky. ‘This is in a small constellation called Phoenix, in the southern sky. With the huge number of particles that flowed in I can place the source to sub-arcsecond accuracy. If the particles came up from below, they came from here.’ She pencilled a small circle of black emptiness. A faint star sat just outside the circle.

  ‘Empty space?’

  ‘This chart goes down to magnitude thirteen. But we’re looking at a very quiet bit of sky, well away from the Milky Way. In fact, almost in the direction of the south galactic pole.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means there are probably no more than a handful of stars within the sight cone. At a guess they’ll be red and white dwarfs with very low luminosities, maybe a halo star or two. But basically we’re looking at an empty region of sky.’